Warehouse 13 Reviews: Season 3, Episode 2

Episode 2: Trials

This one starts in the cockpit of a plane, with the pilot telling the co-pilot a really old joke. As they prepare for approach, the pilot starts acting weird and we see a mask-like effect appear around his eyes, like Black Lightning. He suddenly pulls off his headset and freaks out, wondering where he is and what he’s doing there. He heads back through the plane (which doesn’t fill the passengers with confidence), leaving the co-pilot to attempt a landing. At Leena’s boardinghouse, we get a voice-over from Myka as she prepares for her first day back with the team. She’s still worried about the responsibility of dealing with world-shattering threats, but knows she can’t hide from that responsibility, even if it scares the hell out of her.

Myka wonders if she’ll be able fit in again and gets a little weirded out when there’s no chair for her at the breakfast table, but Leena soon remedies that. Claudia’s happy to have her back and Artie assigns her and Pete the airline pilot. Turns out the guy (Adam) actually forgot who he is, which is why he freaked out—he literally couldn’t remember how to fly a plane. Myka proves she hasn’t forgotten too much as she manages to translate Pete talking with his mouth full of donut. She asks Pete if there’s anything he needs to say to her, to clear the air about her quitting the team, but he says everything’s cool.

Artie sends Claudia and Steve to an auction in Boston to bid on a knife that belonged to Mary Mallon (aka Typhoid Mary). Claudia is stoked to find out she’s the senior agent on this case (she does a happy dance) and Steve is a little disappointed to get such a pedestrian task. Artie says to bring back the artifact before deciding how easy the mission is. In Seattle, Pete and Myka meet the pilot, Adam, who seems to be mentally de-aging; the day before he thought he was a college student, but now he’s colouring with crayons and his doctor says he’s got a mental age of about five. She says whatever he has isn’t contagious, and doesn’t do any physical damage, but it causes him to regress mentally, like an accelerated Alzheimer’s. In the same hospital, a surgeon comes down with the same affliction (and we see the same silver-eyed, lightning-mask effect) during a bypass and forgets how to operate.

In Boston, Claudia bids on the knife and gets pissed off when some woman bids against her. (Steve: “Do you not understand how an auction works?”) Claudia wins in the end (and jumps up cheering like a goofball), but she’s really pissed off to find out the knife has been stolen … before the auction even started. She’s worried about crashing and burning on her first real assignment, but Steve is more worried that whoever stole the knife has the power to make people sick. In Seattle, Pete and Myka check out the surgeon (Lisa) with the mysterious affliction. She’s not as regressed as Adam … she’s acting like an annoying teenager. Pete and Myka can’t come up with any connection between Adam and Lisa, and they figure the cause can’t be air or waterborne, or more people would be affected. They keep digging.

In Boston, Steve uses his lie-detecting power to clear the woman who bid against Claudia. They check employees at the auction house and come up with a guy named Owen Larsen who quit that morning after only working there for a week. They get his address and head for his place. We see someone watching them from a car across the street; I’ve got a pretty good idea who it might be. In Seattle, Myka gets nothing about regression artifacts from Leena, but does get the impression Pete might still be upset with her. Pete comes in with a connection between Adam and Lisa … they both ate at a local restaurant on the same night, which was also the night a waitress there was murdered. Myka tries to get Pete to open up, but he just gives her a string of movie quotes (from Star Wars, Clash of the Titans, Chinatown, Anchorman, Steel Magnolias, Apocalypse Now, Jaws, Rocky, and Scarface).

Pete checks out the restaurant where the murder happened and finds out a guy named Geoffery has been arrested. Adam and Lisa were supposed to appear as witnesses during the trial. Coincidence? Doubtful. Pete calls to tell Myka and she says Adam has regressed to the point where his mind is shutting down completely. Soon he may even forget how to breathe. In Boston, Claudia is still worked up about her case going bad. Steve tries to take her mind off it and she thinks he’s attracted to her. She tries to let him down easy, but he finally tells her he’s gay, which makes her feel like a total idiot. In Seattle, Pete talks to Geoffery in prison (with his lawyer, Aaron, sitting in) about the incapacitated witnesses. Aaron gets all snotty and accuses Pete of helping railroad his client. He says Pete should be protecting Geoffery’s best friend (Eric), who drove Geoffery home that night, but the prosecution doesn’t seem to care about possible alibis.

Myka talks to the dead girl’s mother, who says she wants justice, not vengeance. They’re interrupted by a reporter (Courtney), who seems to have made up her mind that Geoffery is guilty and resents Myka trying to prove otherwise. So much for journalistic neutrality. In Boston, Steve gets Claudia to admit the reason she’s so worked up is because she wants Artie to be proud of her. (She also lets slip that she was institutionalized.) Steve says Artie’s already proud, or he wouldn’t have put her in charge. They see Larsen returning home and try to get the knife, but he pepper sprays Steve and takes off. Claudia chases him into an alley, where a car is parked. Someone opens the car door as Larsen runs past, shattering his knee. It turns out to be Artie, but when he tries to grab the knife, he and Larsen touch it simultaneously and Larsen’s fucked up knee is transferred to Artie, which gives Larsen time to take off. Claudia is shocked to see Artie there and realizes he was checking up on her.

In Seattle, Geoffery’s best friend (and potential witness), Eric, has come down with the regression affliction and thinks he’s about eight years old. His mom is worried and Myka asks if Courtney has had any contact with Eric. His mom says Courtney has interviewed most of the witnesses and Myka wonders if Courtney is the one making everyone sick. She tries to tell Pete her theory, but he comes down with the same affliction and starts mentally regressing to a kid right in front of her. He ends up being the same age he was when his dad died and confides to Myka (who he’s already kind of attached to) that his mom is keeping busy to get her mind off her husband’s death, so it’s almost like he’s losing her too. When his sister goes to college in a couple of years, that’ll be everyone he cares about leaving him.

Myka goes to see Courtney at work and gives her shit, asking what she’s using on Pete and the others. Courtney insists she didn’t do anything, and apparently she’s telling the truth, since she also regresses right in front of Myka. In Boston, Artie explains that he wasn’t checking up on Claudia, he just wanted to watch her in action on her first case in charge. They make up and Claudia finds Larsen with a computer trace. Artie takes off, saying he trusts her to handle things. In Seattle, Myka talks to Geoffery in prison and asks about Courtney and her aggressive interviewing style. Geoffery says Courtney’s not as tough as she acts; when she tried to ambush his lawyer, Aaron ripped her a new one and made her look stupid.

In Boston, Claudia and Steve get to a hospital just in time to find Larsen using Typhoid Mary’s knife (which is actually more of a cleaver) to transfer his son’s terminal cancer into himself. Larsen says his son has a kid who needs a father as he grows up, so Larsen followed up on the Typhoid Mary rumour from a crackpot website. Steve says they won’t arrest him for stealing the knife, since their job is to go after artifacts, not bad guys … something Claudia told him earlier. In Seattle, Myka views the tape of Aaron making Courtney look stupid and sees that he’s wearing an old-fashioned tie clip (which is almost redundant, since nobody wears tie clips anymore). She realizes Aaron talked to every victim, including Pete. She goes to see him at the prison (where he’s waiting to talk to his client) and finds out he’s only had the tie clip for a week; it was an anonymous gift. Myka figures someone’s using him to screw up the murder case and she takes the tie clip. She sees the initials W.W. on it and figures it belonged to Walter Winchell, famous for getting information from people.

Leena confirms it, finding a photo of Winchell wearing the tie clip. Myka notices Winchell was wearing matching cufflinks and figure they must reverse the effects of the tie clip, since Winchell didn’t leave a conspicuous trail of regressed interviewees behind him. Leena finds out that a cub reporter who worked with Winchell was Eric’s grandfather. Myka heads to the hospital, only to find Eric’s mother has checked him out after he made a miraculous recovery. She’s ready to go after them, but Pete wants to go with her. She tells him she’ll be back later, but he doesn’t believe her and gets all pouty.

At Eric’s house, Myka finds his mother packing. She asks about the cufflinks and tells Eric’s mom she knows the truth: she used the cufflinks to make sure Geoffery got convicted, so the cops wouldn’t figure out Eric was the one who really killed the waitress. She insists it was an accident and threatens to drop the cufflinks in the garbage disposal, consigning Pete and the others to death. Eric comes in and he’s surprised to hear his mom has been screwing with other people’s memories … she’d told him he was the only one. Eric tells her it’s time for him to take responsibility for his own actions. Myka shoots the disposal switch (would that really make it stop running?) and Eric gives her the cufflinks.

Back at the hospital, Myka bags the tie clip and uses the cufflinks to cure Pete (and presumably the others, although that isn’t shown). We get another voice over from her, talking about how the world can be a scary place with all the terrible shit that happens, but the good stuff is there too, if you look for it. Myka apologizes for quitting so abruptly without giving Pete a heads up and he forgives her. We find out the voice over is Myka telling her story to Kosan and a couple more Regents. (It turns out that Eric had been secretly dating the waitress and when she broke things off, he took Geoffery’s car to go see her and things got out of hand. When his mom found out, she used the tie clip to screw up Geoffery’s defense.) The Regents formally reinstate Myka as a Warehouse agent and the episode ends almost as it began, with Myka joining the others at the breakfast table … except she looks a lot more relaxed now.